Author Archives: Andrew Beer

Retractions and Re-considerations

The meaning of the word retraction is well known. It is the withdrawing of a statement now recognized as false. The latest issue of the Atlantic (January/February 2021) provides an example. Noting that the magazine has retracted a previously published article, the editor explains: “We cannot attest to the trustworthiness and credibility of the author, and therefore we cannot attest to the veracity of the piece in its entirety.” Out of respect for veracity and the trust of its readers, the journal retracts what it can no longer vouch for. It formally withdraws that which it previously put forth as true, but which has since been shown, or at least suspected, to be false.

But this common use of retraction in English has become a source of confusion, whenever it is used to translate the title of a work by St. Augustine of Hippo. Writing near the end of his life, Augustine called that work, in Latin, Retractationes. In English the work goes by different names: Retractions, Retractations, and Reconsiderations. Well, which is best?

First, we should consider what Augustine himself says of his purpose for the work.

iam diu est ut facere cogito atque dispono, quod nunc adiuvante domino adgredior, quia differendum esse non arbitror, ut opuscula mea, sive in libris sive in epistulis sive in tractatibus, cum quadam iudiciaria severitate recenseam, et quod me offendit velut censorio stilo denotem. neque enim quisquam nisi imprudens ideo quia mea errata reprehendo, me reprehendere audebit. sed si dicit non ea debuisse a me dici, quae postea mihi etiam displicerent, verum dicit et mecum facit. Eorum quippe reprehensor est, quorum et ego sum. neque enim ea reprehendere deberem, si dicere debuissem.

I have long been considering and arranging how to do that which now, with the Lord’s help, I undertake, because I judge that it must not be postponed—namely, to re-examine my little works, whether in books or in letters or in treatises, with a certain courtroom severity, and to mark out as with the censor’s stylus what offends me. For no one unless a fool will dare to criticize me only because I criticize my own mistakes. But if he says those things ought not to have been said by me which afterwards might also displease me, he speaks and deals with me truly. For he criticizes the very things I myself also criticize. For I would not be obliged to critize them, had it been right to say them.

Retractationes, prol. 1.1

It may appear from this that Augustine’s work will be a series of retractions in the same sense as indicated above. But we should note that Augustine’s retractationes occur in two distinct steps: Augustine will first re-examine (recenseam) his works, and then he will mark out (denotem) whatever offends him now because he sees it was written in error (mea errata). It is the verb recenseam—“re-examine”—that indicates the truest sense of the title Augustine gives the work, Retractationes. Each retractatio is not so much a retraction, in the sense of a withdrawal or drawing back, but rather a re-consideration—a considering again of what was previously considered, written, and recorded. This is the true meaning of the Latin word retractatio. It is formed from the prefix re– —which means “again”—and the noun tractatio, which is literally a “taking in hand” or “handling” and so a “treatment” or “dicsussion” of a subject.

Thus, in his Retractationes—in his Re-considerations—Augustine returns again to all those subjects he considered throughout his long life, not to withdraw what he thought and wrote before, but to give it fresh consideration from a perspective of greater experience and wisdom.

Retractions are obviously right and necessary whenever we recognize a previous assertion to be false. The example of Augustine suggests we shouldn’t neglect the value of re-considerations.

Prooimion, or Exordium

Prooimion (προοίμιον): “opening, introduction; in epic poems, proëm, preamble; in speeches, exordium; metaphorically used of any prelude or beginnig” (Liddell, Scott, and Jones).

The title of this blog is Etymologies. It is named after a work by St. Isidore of Seville, in Latin Etymologiae. You can read about St. Isidore and his Etymologiae here. You can read Isidore’s work itself here. For more on the significance of St. Isidore and his Etymologiae, see this beautiful essay by Robert Louis Wilken.

Here is an excerpt from Etymologiae: book II, de rhetorica et dialectica, section 7, de quattuor partibus orationis:

Partes orationis in Rhetorica arte quattuor sunt: exordium, narratio, argumentatio, conclusio. Harum prima auditoris animum provocat, secunda res gestas explicat, tertia fidem adser­tionibus facit, quarta finem totius orationis conplectitur. 2 Inchoandum est itaque taliter, ut benivolum, docilem, vel adtentum auditorem faciamus: benivolum precando, docilem instruendo, adtentum excitando. Narrandum est ita, ut breviter atque aperte loquamur; argumentandum est ita, ut primum nostra firmemus, dehinc adversa confringamus; concludendum ita, ut concitemus animos audientis inplere quae dicimus.

The parts of a speech in the art of Rhetoric are four: introduction, narration, argumentation, conclusion. The first of these appeals to the listener’s mind, the second unfolds what happened, the third creates credibility in the assertions, the fourth embraces the end of the entire speech. 2 And so we must begin in such a way, that we make the listener favorable, docile, or attentive: favorable by beseeching, docile by instructing, attentive by arousing. We must state the case in such a way, that we speak briefly and plainly; we must argue in such a way, that we first fortify our own position, then shatter the opposition’s; we must conclude in such a way, that we move the will of our listener to carry out what we say.

The title of this inaugural post, prooimion, is the Greek name for the first of the four parts of a rhetorical speech. Isidore gives it its Latin name, exordium, which is the term typically used by Latin writers on the art of rhetoric. The Greek original, however, survives in English as our word proem, which now means simply any “introduction” or “preface”. But something has been lost in the gradual assimilation of a foreign word—we’ve lost the concrete vividness of the original. The Greek word prooimion is a compound of the prefix pro-, which means “before” or “in front of” and the word oimion, a diminutive form of oimos, which means “way, road, path”.

A prooimion is thus a little path that lies before and leads up to something—an introduction in the etymological sense of that word: a leading into or within. As the OED defines “introduction”, a prooimion is likewise “a preliminary explanation prefixed to or included in a book or other writing; the part of a book which leads up to the subject treated, or explains the author’s design or purpose. Also, the corresponding part of a speech, lecture, etc.”

Isidore’s term exordium, however, contains a different metaphor: an exordium was literally “the warp of a web”. The rhetorical term is thus a metaphor from weaving. Where a Greek orator would lead us along the little path into his subject matter, Roman rhetors laid down the warp of the speech they would proceed to weave.